When kids arrived at school Monday, they were wearing their new clothes, but this time it was part of the new standardized dress code.

Craig Middle School Principal Dan Dukes says the first day of school went smoothly.

"Overwhelmingly almost every student in the school had their standardized dress on today,” Dukes said. “They looked sharp. They looked really good. There was just a different feel, a sense of pride.”

Nicole Homer, a seventh grade English language arts teacher at Craig Middle School, said the dress code makes her life easier.

“My No. 1 objective as a teacher is to teach the kids, so I don't want to spend time in my classroom addressing things like inappropriate clothing or distracting inappropriate messages on their clothes,” Homer said. “It makes my job easier because I have so much less to worry about."

In addition, Dukes said the new dress code has a lot of pros, especially in middle school.

“You start to feel that peer pressure in middle school of having to dress a certain way, having to have a certain look, a certain style or name brand,” said Duke. “What we think this new standardized dress does is really takes that pressure and that stressor off that table.”

Kids are always growing. Dukes said the school does have a plan to accommodate that.

“We have plans to create a clothes closet here that we can take donations in, either for a very low price, or for free for those families who cannot afford them,” Dukes said.

For students who violate the dress code, administration says it will either call a parent to bring the child approved clothing or the school will have items on hand that the students can borrow and get right back to class.

Administrators from Abilene ISD say that after input from teachers and parents, they felt that updating the dress code could help middle school students more easily adapt.